Recently in Holistic Living Category

This has been making the rounds for a while, but this music video of "Say Hey" by my fave band Michael Franti and Spearhead just gave me a nice Friday afternoon boost with its super-positive vibe. Enjoy!

Gallows humor, dark comedy--created for very good reasons. Something along the lines of "If I don't laugh, I'm going to cry." And because funny is hidden in the deepest crevices of grief and suffering sometimes. And in the nooks of stress and general despair. It's a way of distancing ourselves from the bad feelings that threaten to consume us, covering up insecurities, bringing light and perception into the shadows.

Today I'm trying to laugh because I am steeped in fear. I've got my bi-annual oncology checkup in a few hours and I can't think, can't really speak too well, and am just barely functioning (also, I've had a hell of a crazy week--my shrink looked at me today and said, "Wow, you're still standing."). And really, fear sucks. It's cold, it's depleting, it's contracting, it brings our energy down, causes our insides to squirt danger juice (cortisol), slows down our immune system, actually takes out brain cells. It's just a total buzzkill.

So when I came across this quote today, it was such a delicious, chain-shaking relief to spontaneously laugh, hard--fear's ultimate antidote:

"We're in the middle of nowhere, which is the safest part of nowhere." - Futurama (the Matt Groening show). 

I feel like it's still making my organs laugh it connects so deeply with the kind of fear I'm in.  Like, nowhere! Ha! Middle of it! Safest! That's the thing with darkish humor (even in its lightest form), you kind of have to be there (read: freaking out) to get it. But anyway, that's all I got.

Have you gotten through a tough time with dark humor?

When my stressy brain saw this, it just about dropped its ball o struggle. On a blog I love, ColorMeKatie, photographer Katie Sokoler created a tent in her apartment. Because she felt like it. I love that idea. A contained, cozy beautiful hideaway within a hideaway. I'd pile in fluffy pillows, a good book, markers, paper, and some music source.

What would your ideal cozy tent contain?

[Image via: http://colormekatie.blogspot.com/2009/11/tent.html]

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"The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them."

- Thomas Merton

Yes, yes, yes! Love. Totally agree. Though I wish instead of "twist" he had said "bend." And that first sentence is kind of long, no? Maybe he should have added something about how we first need to accept and love ourselves.

See? It's really easy to concur and incredibly hard to do. To let a beloved, friend, lover, parent, sibling, etc. simply BE.

And yet, it's what we usually crave most. To be loved exactly as we are. (See Exhibit A: Bridget Jones's Diary, "He said he likes me exactly as I am." Her friends marvel: "Exactly as you are?" Her, awed. "Exactly as I am." Exhibit B: A Broadway show called, "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change.")

As the second part of that quote--that if we haven't accepted someone we're not truly loving, just experiencing our projected glory--that's the hardest to take. For me, for example, there was once someone I almost loved after dating a really brief moment. And I got hooked, a little kooky in my head, just staying sad, sad, sad long after it ended. But I'm pretty sure a big piece of that sadness is because being with him revived a part of me I thought might be gone, baby, gone. She was alive and vivacious and loving and hot--all things I am in my best moments. With him, those moments were magnified because I felt truly seen. And it quenched a deep, potent longing to feel my essence known.

Problem being: I fell in love with her. Me. The awesome, non-cranky, non-moody, organized, fully on top of it Me. And him, he was awesome, lovely, cool--what I knew of him. I didn't know him well enough to love him, certainly not to spend a year obsessing and sad about him. 

I'm not alone in loving someone for how he makes me feel, what he brings out and makes visible. It's certainly not all bad. It's lovely when we can do that for each other. But it's a sticky wicket because when the steady supply of acknowledgement and positive mirroring runs out or pauses--and it will--then the love seems to go away.

Anyway, my point? I really like that quote. It reminds me to own my power, love myself, so I'm strong enough to truly see and love someone else exactly as he is. And that's a helpful skill for every relationship--friend, family, beloved--in our lives. 

Can you relate?

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